by Merry Farmer
“Thank you, Thomas.” Rebecca sighed and put Lorraine’s empty water glass on the bedside table. “I don’t know how I will ever repay you.”
He would take his payment in kisses if she would let him.
“Don’t think of it,” he said instead. “I just want to see them well.”
“Rebecca, where’s Grover gone off to?” Sadie interrupted from the doorway, every bit as agitated as she’d been a few minutes ago.
“I’m right here!” Grover called from the other side of the house.
A moment later he appeared, holding a squirming Helen in his arms. He narrowed his eyes at the sight of Thomas. Rebecca stood and crossed the room to take Helen from him and hug her.
“Run down to the train station and ask Lewis Jones when the next train to Butte is leaving, would you?” Sadie asked Grover.
Grover nodded and dashed off.
“The next train to Butte?” Rebecca asked.
“It’s for your pa,” Sadie explained, then hurried back to Angus’s room.
Rebecca turned her confusion to Thomas.
“Your father has had far more of the peppermints than the girls, and I’m afraid they’ve made him sicker than I can treat with limited equipment here. I think it’s best if he goes to the hospital in Butte.”
“Will he be all right?”
“I believe he will, with proper treatment.” Thomas nodded.
Rebecca sighed and marched back to her post between Rachel and Lorraine’s beds. “I wish they would finish that hospital in town so we wouldn’t have to worry about things like this.”
“It will be done soon.” He moved to check on Rachel one more time, smoothing her hair when she smiled up at him. “In the meantime, I told your mother I would stay here and look out for you while they are gone.”
“You did?” Rebecca glanced up at him with a bundle of emotions in her bright eyes that sent his heart beating in double-time and a surge of longing through his body.
“Of course, I won’t stay if you don’t want me to,” he said quickly, covering the heat that rose to his face by watching Rachel.
“Oh! No, no you’re welcome to stay.” She hid the conflicting jumble of emotion in her eyes from him by tending to little Helen in her arms. “But I thought you were going to attend the town council meeting tonight.”
“I was. I am. I think it’s important to prevent Sobel’s Pond from being closed, especially now that we know the true cause of the illnesses.”
“Well,” Rebecca began slowly. “I suppose I could ask Eve Andrews to come watch the girls while we go to that.”
Thomas glanced up. “You want to come to the town council meeting?”
She met his eyes, the flush on her cheeks deepening. “I care about the children and I would hate to see a pond that has nothing wrong with it, where kids have been playing for generations, be shut down. And besides, if the girls really are going to get better now, then that’s all the more reason to go.”
He smiled. There was something deeper than what she was letting on behind her desire to go to the meeting. She had a fire in her that he suspected had been smoldering for a while. If he wasn’t mistaken, the town council could get an ear-full that night.
Chapter Five
The Cold Springs courthouse wasn’t the usual place for the town council to hold a meeting, but with so many parents interested in the health of their children and the fate of Sobel’s Pond, it had been opened for that night’s meeting. The council sat at two tables that had been pushed together near the front of the room, Michael West, the unofficial head of the council, in the middle with Christian Avery to one side and Rev. Mark Andrews on the other. Lewis Jones, Samuel Kuhn, Delilah Reynolds, and a few newer members of the council that Rebecca didn’t know as well sat with them. Her father should have been there, but his train for Butte had left two hours ago.
“I’d like to call this special meeting to order,” Mr. West spoke from the center of the table. His voice wasn’t particularly loud, but the room hushed all the same. “We’re here to discuss whether some kind of contamination at Sobel’s Pond might be what is making several children who went swimming in it sick. If that’s the case, we will discuss whether to shut it down.”
Rebecca sat straighter and clenched her fists in her skirts. She and Thomas had found seats in one of the front benches. Thomas’s sister, Lily, sat on his other side with her sleeping son in her arms. The room was stiflingly hot, even with the windows open, but Rebecca hardly noticed the sweat dripping down her back.
“Dr. Greene,” Mr. West continued. “What is your assessment of the situation?”
Dr. Greene rose from his seat at the other end of the room. In spite of the heat, he was dressed in a fine suit and vest that had a gold watch fob running from one pocket to the other. He looked more like a lawyer than a doctor, with his thumbs hooked in his vest pockets.
“Gentlemen of the town council,” he began with a satisfied grin.
“And lady,” Mrs. Reynolds added.
Dr. Greene ignored her. “We’ve all heard that several of our town’s children have fallen ill in the last week with a mysterious malady. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is no mystery at all. Every one of these children went swimming at Sobel’s Pond before falling ill. The water is clearly contaminated. We need to shut the pond down and bar it from easy access. At least until scientific means can be employed to purify the water.”
Rebecca’s eyebrows rose. It was the first time she had heard anything about calling in scientists to purify the water. On the surface, it seemed logical. If there was a problem, real scientists could solve it, she was sure. Still, it didn’t feel right. She glanced over her shoulder, wondering if Nathan Sobel had come to the meeting and what he thought about Dr. Greene’s suggestion, but couldn’t spot him.
Beside her, Thomas raised his hand.
“Yes, Dr. Smith,” Mr. West recognized him.
Thomas stood. He had halfway opened his mouth to speak when Dr. Greene said, “Now just a minute. I’m not finished here. I won’t have you passing off my time to this trouble-making Indian.”
How Thomas managed to stand his ground with complete calm, the insult not even showing on his face, was beyond Rebecca.
“The pond is not what has been making the children sick.” Thomas jumped right into his argument.
Dr. Greene snorted. “And what has brought you to this conclusion? Did you perform a moon dance on the summer solstice and make sacrifices to your heathen gods to divine the answer?”
Rebecca clenched her jaw in rage. Thomas continued to be unmoved, shoulders relaxed, expression neutral. He faced the town council instead of Dr. Greene.
“I had my suspicions about the pond to begin with. If it were indeed contaminated, then wouldn’t every child who has been swimming this summer and in summers past have taken ill? Why did only some of the children who went swimming that day get sick and not all of them?”
Dr. Greene sniffed but didn’t answer. The members of the town council watched Thomas with interest. Rebecca leaned closer to him. She had been thinking the same thing. Her heart felt lighter as she watched him continue with his argument.
“I went down to the pond and swam in it myself. I spoke to Mr. Sobel and asked what he knew about the pond. It is fed through underground springs that are purer than half the town’s drinking water. I knew it had to be something else making the children sick.”
“What is it, then?” Mrs. Reynolds asked.
“Peppermints.”
“Peppermints?” Dr. Greene balked. “Really, are you going to sit there and listen to this nonsense?” he said to the town council.
Mr. West held up a hand to silence Dr. Greene. “Could you explain a little more?” he asked Thomas.
“Certainly.” Thomas twisted to retrieve Angus’s tin of mints from the bench. He showed it to the council members. “Angus McGee had these mints shipped from New York last week.”
“I remember,” Mr. West nodded. “He was as
excited about those as he was about his cigars.”
Several people in the courtroom laughed.
“He was,” Thomas agreed.
“Make him sit down and shut up,” Dr. Greene sighed. “This has nothing to do with the contamination at Sobel’s Pond at all.”
Again, Thomas ignored him. “Mr. McGee gave a bag each of these peppermints to his grandchildren. Rachel and Lorraine shared them with their friends. Grover, as it turns out, doesn’t like peppermints and gave his bag to Isaac Vane, who, it should be noted, is one of the children who became sick, along with his younger sister.”
“Coincidence,” Dr. Greene sniffed.
“Is it just a coincidence, Dr. Smith?” Mr. West asked. He stared at the tin of mints with a worried frown.
“I’m afraid it’s not.” Thomas set the tin on the council’s table. “After treating Angus McGee and his grandchildren when they became ill—so ill, in Mr. McGee’s case, that I recommended he travel to the hospital in Butte at once—I telegraphed the manufacturer of those peppermints.”
“And?” Mr. West asked.
“And they were quick to reply that they were, in fact, part of a contaminated batch. Trace amounts of arsenic made their way into the candy’s mix.” A gasp went up from those listening to the story. “It wasn’t enough to kill anyone eating the contaminated candy outright, unless they managed to consume an entire tin in one sitting, but it was enough to make people sick.”
Murmurs filled the courtroom as the concerned parents in attendance turned to one another to express their shock and outrage and relief that it wasn’t more serious.
“This is preposterous,” Dr. Greene spoke above the noise. His puffy face was red and his bushy sideburns seemed to rustle. “Are you going to take an Indian’s word for it?”
Thomas pulled the telegraph he had received from Doc Jolly’s from his pocket and plunked it on top of the tin. “I would remind you, Dr. Greene, that I, too, am a doctor.” To the council he said, “This is the telegraph from Doc Jolly’s manufacturing.”
Mr. Avery reached across the table to take the telegraph and read it. His frown flew into a look of surprise and he handed the paper to Mr. West.
“Whether or not a few candies made people sick,” Dr. Greene pressed on, flustered now, “the fact of the matter remains that children fell ill after swimming in that pond. Are you really willing to stake the health and safety of your young ones on the word of an Indian and a bunch of mints?”
He turned and appealed to the parents in the room. A half second of stunned silence was followed by more murmuring.
“I say that it can’t hurt anyone to be thorough,” Dr. Greene went on. “If you’re so all-fired determined to protect the children in this town that you will listen to the nonsense of a red man, then why not close Sobel’s Pond down for a few more days while tests are performed?”
Rebecca’s fury renewed. Dismissing Thomas in spite of his proof was one thing, but needlessly closing the pond was another. She couldn’t stay silent. She stood, fists still clenched at her sides.
“Dr. Smith has told you the reason why our children were getting sick. He has showed you proof and it has nothing to do with Sobel’s Pond. That pond is the one place in Cold Springs that our children have gone to for years for relief on a hot summer’s day. It is a place for friendship and comfort. No one has ever become sick from swimming there before because the water is fine. Are you going to let him shut it down just because?” She turned to Dr. Greene, back itching.
“And what would you know about it, missy?” Dr. Greene snapped.
Rebecca squared her shoulders. “I know that Dr. Smith is a smart man. I know that he’s a fine doctor who has a way with children and would never put a single one of them in harm’s way.”
Her glance flickered to Thomas as she spoke, the color rising to her cheeks when their eyes met. She knew he was a great many things more than just a competent doctor. He was a fine man. Her heart flipped in her chest even as her mind shouted caution.
“Oh, I understand,” Dr. Greene interrupted her twisting thoughts. A sly grin spread across his puffy face.
The flash of feeling, the urge to trust that had distracted Rebecca vanished. She blinked and turned back to Dr. Greene. “I’m sorry?”
Dr. Greene snorted. “You have some sort of unholy tryst going on with the savage, don’t you?”
“I beg your pardon?” Rebecca protested, but the flush that rose up her neck was a dead giveaway. She darted a glance around the room, finding too many knowing grins—or disapproving ones—for her comfort.
“You can beg, Mrs. Turner, but I see no reason to give you pardon. Your taste in men leaves something to be desired.”
“I’ll not let you speak to her like that,” Thomas rushed to her defense. Rebecca was both relieved and mortified.
Dr. Greene ignored Thomas. “You expect your friends and neighbors here to trust your endorsement of a man, Mrs. Turner, when they all know you were married to a crook?”
The heat in Rebecca’s cheeks burned to shame. “Bo has nothing to do with this,” she said, voice shaking. “He’s long gone.”
“Yes, and why might that be?” Dr. Greene asked, then instantly answered with, “Because you flew in the face of natural law and tore apart what God had joined together, that’s why.”
Several people—from Mr. West to Mr. Avery to one or two of Rebecca’s friends in the courtroom—erupted in protest, but Thomas spoke above all of them.
“Mr. Turner was tried in a court of law and found guilty of several counts of theft,” he said. “His conduct toward his family before that was not to be admired, as I think you well know, being the only doctor in town until recently.” He faced Dr. Greene with steel in his eyes.
“A man has every right to discipline a disobedient wife in whatever way he sees fit,” Dr. Greene said with a sniff, turning away from both Thomas and Rebecca.
“It’s no wonder you were never married, Dr. Greene,” Thomas said.
Rebecca felt the thrill of his comment to her toes. It didn’t put her at ease as she stood at the front of the room, though. She glanced longingly to her seat on the bench where Lily watched her. It was a mistake for Rebecca to speak up, to put herself out like this. Bo would give it to her when—
Bo was gone. She was her own woman now, and she would find the strength to fight for what she believed in, even if she had to dig it out of her soul.
“Whatever my past may be,” she began, “Dr. Smith is—”
“This is all beside the point.” Dr. Greene waved away her burst of strength with an irritated sigh. “Close the pond down. Call in a scientific team to test the waters. If they’re not contaminated, reopen it. It’s as simple as that.”
He marched to his bench and sat, crossing his arms.
For once in her life, Rebecca stood her ground. She glanced to Thomas, then faced the town council. “If there was no other answer, I wouldn’t mind having the pond shut down as long as you intended to open it again. But the water is clean! Dr. Smith has said so. Why won’t you listen to him?”
“I, for one, have listened to him,” Mr. Avery said, “and I don’t think it’s necessary to shut it down.”
He leaned forward and looked up and down the table at his fellow council members.
“Well, I think that it can’t hurt to shut it down for a week or so,” Lewis Jones said. “If Dr. Greene says it should be tested, then I’m inclined to agree with him.”
Several of the other councilmen nodded in agreement. Rebecca clenched her jaw in frustration but returned to her bench and sat. Lily reached for her hand and squeezed it with a weak smile. Rebecca tried but failed to return the smile. The conversation had left too bitter a taste in her mouth and too much shame still burning in her cheeks.
Mr. West cleared his throat and sat straighter. The room stilled.
“We are, of course, missing the obvious here,” he said. With a wry grin he went on. “Has anybody besides Dr. Smith talked to Natha
n Sobel and found out what his thoughts on the whole thing are? The argument could be made that this is his call, not ours. He owns the pond.”
The council members looked at each other for answers with shrugs and shaking heads.
“I don’t know that it matters what old man Sobel thinks,” Lewis Jones spoke up, a reluctant hunch to his shoulders. When Mr. West turned to him he added, “He’s been using the phone in my stationhouse a lot lately. He’s about to sell and move to Billings with Agnes and her husband, since his eyes are going on him. So he won’t own the pond for much longer.”
The announcement, unsurprising as it was, sent a jolt of excitement through Rebecca, as if it was somehow the answer to a riddle that she hadn’t entirely pieced together yet.
“There you go,” Dr. Greene said from his bench, speaking fast. “Consulting with Mr. Sobel is unnecessary. I say you vote and move on.”
“I agree,” Mr. Kuhn said from his seat at the end of the council table. “This meeting has run on long enough, and I’d like to go home to my wife and daughter.”
“How has your daughter been feeling lately?” Thomas asked the man.
Mr. Kuhn balked as though a dog had spoken to him. “She is perfectly well, thank you very much!”
“And has she been swimming at Sobel’s Pond recently?”
Mr. Kuhn snapped his mouth shut in a tight line, color rising up his neck. Rebecca’s heart beat faster. She had seen Isabella Kuhn at the pond with Grover and his friends on several occasions.
“Oh, just vote already!” Dr. Greene snapped. “We all want to go home.”
For once he had said something Rebecca agreed with. She wanted to go home to her children, to shake off the weight of disappointment that the meeting had filled her with.
Thomas shrugged. “Vote as you see fit,” he said and turned to stride back to the bench where Rebecca and Lily sat.
Even though his expression remained neutral and strong, Rebecca caught the same glint of frustration in his eyes that she felt. Strangely, it eased her own irritation. She touched his leg as he sat, the way she would with Grover or her father if they had been let down. Thomas caught her hand and held it, clear as day, in front of anyone who cared to look. Her heart beat a crazy rhythm from her throat to her core. She wanted to pull away, keep herself strong, and yet it felt so good to be comforted.